"But you know what? Taylor Swift is like Grace Slick. You know who Grace Slick was?"

"Jefferson Starship?" Virgil ventured.

"Yeah, and another band, Jefferson Airplane, before that. Everybody thought that she was going to be the queen of rock and roll. Then along came Janis Joplin, and Janis Joplin was the queen of rock and roll. Wendy is Janis Joplin. But she's got to make a move. She knows it. Time is pressing on her."

WENDY AND BERNI LIVED together in a double-wide out at Wendy's father's place, Zoe said. Berni and Wendy's father were tight.

"I think he's the one that got Wendy back with Berni, instead of with me," Zoe said.

"Are you still in love?" Signy asked.

"Well, what do you think?"

Signy said to her sister, "I think it might be a lack of other opportunity. If you were down in the Cities, with lots of other women, you'd be fine. But up here, what're you going to do? Go out with Sandy Ericson? I mean, Wendy's what you got."

Zoe faked a shiver and said to Virgil, "Sandy goes about two-twenty in her boxer shorts."

"And it ain't muscle," Signy said. To her sister: "You know why Wendy was plucking your magic twanger? Because you're an accountant, and she thought she might learn something about handling money. That's why."

"Sig-shut up," Zoe said.

VIRGIL ASKED, "If Berni thought Wendy was going to dump her because of McDill, would Berni have shot McDill?"

Signy and Zoe looked at each other, and then simultaneously shrugged. Zoe said, "I don't know if Berni knows anything about guns. I could ask."

"Don't do that. You already had one nut creeping around your house." Signy said, then, "Water's boiling. I'm gonna drop that corn in there for one minute and then we're gonna eat, so you might as well come now."

AS THEY STOOD UP, Virgil said to Zoe, "I can't think why somebody would break into your house, that would be connected with this killing. Can you?"

She shook her head. "No."

"On the other hand, we have a violent crime, and you know all the main local people around the dead woman, and you've been seen hanging out with me, and somebody breaks into your house. Is this the first time you've had a break-in?"

"Oh, yeah-I mean, we had some kids who were breaking into houses in my neighborhood, a couple of years ago, stealing stuff to buy drugs, but they caught them right away."

"There are burglaries," Signy said. "It's not like this place is totally crime-free."

"But the time link makes it interesting," Virgil said. "She's been up around the crime scene, she's seen with me, and we get the break-in."

"On some of the crime shows, you get people who don't know what they know, and that's why they're in danger," Zoe said. "You think that's like me? I don't know what I know?"

Virgil grinned at her and said, "Crime shows and mystery novels are totally different things than real life, you know? What I'm thinking is, you had somebody come in there, planning to threaten you, or even hurt you, or to find out what you were saying to me, or to find out what you knew, and he came in with a pipe or just his fists, and this voice says, 'I've got a gun,' and he says, 'Fuck it,' and takes off."

"Or she," Zoe said.

"Or she. And if you knew something, I think you'd know it. Wouldn't you?"

Signy said, "Well, we had that secretary of defense, who was always talking about known unknowns, and unknown unknowns, and all that-maybe Zoe could have an unknown known."

Virgil looked at her for a second, then said, "Two beers might have been one too many. I didn't understand a thing you said."

SIGNY HAD a tiny kitchen table, and three mismatched chairs. As they sat around, working on the mediocre salad and terrific sweet corn with real butter, Virgil asked Signy what she did, and she said, "I've got a quilt store in Grand Rapids."

"Ah. That's pretty cool. I like quilts," Virgil said. "My mom makes them and I've got three of them."

"Damn near can't make a living at it," Signy said. "You can get so close… but then you always need an extra fifty dollars for something. You'll think everything's working this week, and then you tear up a tire or something."

Zoe said, "Signy went to the U in Minneapolis. In art."

Virgil reevaluated, and so obviously that Signy said, "What? You thought I was a hillbilly woman, right?"

"Nah. I come from a small town myself," he said.

"It's Joe that's dragging you down," Zoe said to Signy. "You oughta get a divorce. Like, next week."

"Divorces cost money and he's not bothering me, so… when I get the money," Signy said.

"I don't even know why you married him; he's such a loser," Zoe said.

"Well," Signy said, and she picked up one of the corn cobs on her plate and held it erect, contemplated it with slightly crossed eyes. About ten inches long, Virgil thought. "I don't honestly know why," she said after a minute.

Zoe fell into a coughing fit, and Virgil asked, "Can you breathe?" and she patted herself on the chest and said, "I inhaled a corn."

"'Zat what it was," Virgil said. And he asked her, "Are you staying here?"

"Until the locks are on," Zoe said. "The lock guy is coming tomorrow morning."

"What're you going to do tomorrow?" Signy asked Virgil.

"Push on people," Virgil said. "I'm going to run around and push on people."

"I'd like to see that," she said; her head was tilted, and she stroked her cheek with the fingers of one hand. "I really would like to see you work."

VIRGIL CRASHED at a chain motel on Highway 169 South, the kind where they don't bother with drywall, but simply paint the concrete blocks a dusty shade of yellow; but offered double-length parking for customers pulling boats. When he checked in, the desk clerk asked him how long he'd be there, and he said, "Three or four days."

Before he went to sleep, in the time he usually thought about God, he thought about Wendy. One problem with looking at a talent in isolation, he thought, was that it was almost impossible to judge exactly how good they were.

Wendy was as good as anyone he'd heard in a small bar in Minnesota-but on the other hand, those bands were in small bars in Minnesota, and that was the problem. Put Wendy up against Emmylou Harris, and she might sound like Raleigh the Talking Bulldog.

Of course, that didn't mean so much if the people around her were convinced that they stood at the edge of a gold mine; on the one hand, you had life in Grand Rapids; in the other one, the possibility of Nashville and Hollywood and… whatever.

Then he thought about God and, after a while, went to sleep.

IN THE MORNING he put on a fresh, but vintage, Nine Inch Nails T-shirt, took five of the eight remaining free miniature Danishes in the complimentary breakfast, and two cups of coffee, and ran out to the Eagle Nest. Another good day, sun creeping up into the sky, almost no wind. He wondered if Johnson was fishing, or if he'd given it up and gone home.

That God-blessed Davenport.

The problem with Davenport, Virgil thought, was that he tended to think in very straight lines. Brutally straight. We have a murder in Grand Rapids, the victim's prominent, the BCA agent with the highest clearance rate in the agency happens to be on a lake nearby, so what do you do? Send in Flowers.

Was there anything creative in that? Was there a break for a new guy, somebody who could use the experience? Did it take into account the agent's emotional state, or need for respite?

Virgil thought not.

Just drop in that fuckin' Flowers, and forget it. Let him sink or swim.

MARGERY STANHOPE was leaning against a railing, looking out over Stone Lake, when Virgil came up beside her. "Still bummed?"

"I can't shake it," she said.

Virgil looked out over the lake and said, "Well… another month, and you can take the winter off."